Human evolution; our complex speech mechanism (Introduction)

DAVID: You have not answered the point that H. sapiens arrived with all the required anatomical changes in place needed to produce human sounds for modern complex language which appears to have started 50,000+ years ago, 250.000 years after the first sapiens arrived. That is Mc Crone's view. Just when did your cell committees do their job?

dhw: Please tell me how McCrone knows when H. sapiens started to make the sounds needed for modern language. Did he happen to be around with his tape recorder?

If you read his book you would be surprised how cogent his arguments are.

dhw: Once again: I am not denying that the changed anatomy was necessary for the new sounds, but neither you nor I nor McCrone can possibly know what sounds were already being made when the anatomy reached its final form. (I propose that the final form, including that of the brain, was reached when pre-sapiens or possible early sapiens succeeded in making all the necessary changes.) As I pointed out yesterday, different modern languages have different sounds, and of course all of these are produced by the final anatomy. But the issue is what in the first place caused the changes that led to the final anatomy. Here are your choices: divine preprogramming, divine dabbling, random mutations, or cellular intelligence making changes IN RESPONSE to the need for new sounds (just like legs changing into flippers IN RESPONSE to the new environment). So please tell me which of these options McCrone favours.

What McCrone strictly presents are major anatomic and neurosensory brain control changes first and then capacity for modern language exists, defined as developing 50,000 year ago. The book is very descriptive of the changes that were required to allow what we do now. No need to describe them again, as I have done several times previously. Remember we arrived with all this stuff in place 300,000 years ago and then 250,000 years later started really complex language. You want cell committees to foresee the future: arch the palate, drop the larynx, invent an epiglottis, reroute the laryngeal nerve, alter lip and tongue muscles and tie it all into specific areas of an enlarged brain. A pipe dream. Mc Crone recognized H. erectus might have spoken, estimating 'five or six words in five seconds". (pg. 161) 'Modern man can speak at the rate of two hundred or more words per minute."